Great ideas of a decade

摘要

Ten years ago, the threat of executives killing a project deemed unprofitable loomed persistently in the pharmaceutical culture where Andreas Manz worked. But inside his laboratory at Ciba Geigy, now Novartis, in Basel, Switzerland, he and D. Jed Harrison were shielded from bureaucratic tumults and did their jobs. They owe that to their boss, the late H. Michael Widmer, who provided the umbrella of protection needed to bring the miniaturization of total analysis systems (laTAS) to the scientific community. "Around us, we had all the storms, and the lab was quiet and had money," recalls Manz of what Widmer did for them. "He made sure we had peace and a five-year horizon to do research, which is gorgeous." When Manz, Harrison, and Widmer published their ground-breaking work in 1992, using the shortened term "IJTAS", they unleashed a revolution that's still gaining steam. Soon after, Michael Ramsey's group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory published its fundamental papers on #mu#TAS--or, as many researchers call it, "lab on a chip". These devices offer the promise of miniaturized analytical tools that are mobile and cheaper to use and consume less reagent. The technology has been heavily used for genetic applications. Biologists, especially, are realizing faster and more precise quantitative data from DNA fragments with #mu#TAS, says Manz. For Harrison, a professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, the aftermath was unexpected. He recalls about 100 phone calls on his voicemail system when he returned from vacation after the research was published. Messages ranged from the scientifically serious to the enterpfisingiy bizarre. "One guy from a potato chip packaging company [called] up to ask ifwe could make these devices in his plastic bags and test the freshness of the potato chip. I mean it really fired people's imagination."